A viral Facebook Live video shows a man being violently arrested in Euclid, Ohio.

A live-streamed video that was making its way around Facebook on August 12th (2017) shows a man being violently arrested in Euclid, OH. (Note: many of the people sharing the video had for some reason misidentified the location as Edina, MN.) As of right now, there aren’t a lot of details outside of what can be seen on the video. (That video is embedded below.)

Later in the evening, the Euclid Police Department did release a statement in which they said that the cops pulled a man named Richard Hubbard III, who is from Cleveland, over for a traffic violation. They then decided to arrest him for some unspecified reason. Euclid is a suburb of Cleveland.

According to the EPD statement, Hubbard refused to turn around and face away from them when the police officers ordered him to. Initially, there are two cops involved in the beating. Eventually, at least three other cops arrive and begin helping handcuff Hubbard.

The cop, that can be seen hitting Hubbard numerous times, including in the back of his head, has not been identified yet. Currently, he is on paid vacation while his co-workers perform an “investigation.”

A woman who can be seen recording with her cell phone apparently was arrested also once the other cops arrived.

Below, is the statement from the Euclid police, via Fox8.com in Cleveland:

Euclid police released a statement about the incident, saying that just before 10:30 a.m., an officer pulled over Richard Hubbard, 25, of Cleveland, for a moving/traffic violation near 240 East 228th Street.

Hubbard was ordered out of the car told to face away from the police as he was taken into custody. Police say that Hubbard ignored that order and began to physically resist as the officer took him into custody.

The violent struggle, pictured below, lasted for over 3 minutes.

Update: Partial dash cam video (also embedded below) has been released, which is included as an update to the previously cited Fox8.com post. However, it’s still not very clear even on that video why the police saw Hubbard as a threat when they initially decided to arrest him.

According to the new statement from police, Hubbard was being arrested for not having a license. In addition, although it isn’t shown on either video, the statement says that Hubbard was tased. (The taser can be seen being thrown onto the street after it apparently wasn’t effective.)

They also state that they thought he was going to run, but he appears to be boxed in between the car, the open car door, and the officer who would later assault him. It doesn’t seem like he would have much of an opportunity to run, even if that was his intention.

For some inexplicable reason Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor “feared for his life” when him and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity were approached by an unarmed 40 year old woman wearing pajamas. The Minneapolis Police Department’s equally ridiculous response to Noor shooting Justine Damond, whose “crime” was calling the police to report a potential sexual assault, was to go out and get a search warrant for Damond’s house.

According to a description of the search warrant posted at KSTP.com, the intent seems to have been to find evidence of drug usage or some sort of written statements by Damond:

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators were granted permission to search Justine Damond’s home hours after she was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer, according to court records.

A criminal law expert can’t understand why.

“I don’t understand why they’re looking for bodily fluids inside her home,” said Joseph Daly, an emeritus professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, referring to one of two recently-released search warrant applications.

“Whose bodily fluids are they looking for? Is she a suspect? I don’t understand why they’re looking for controlled substances inside her home. I don’t understand why they’re looking for writings inside her home. The warrant does not explain that to me.”

“When I read that search warrant, I really cannot find probable cause to search her home,” he continued.

According to court documents, investigators applied for the warrant on the following grounds:

The property or things above-described was used as a means of committing a crime

The possession of the property or things above-described constitutes a crime.

The property or things above-described is in the possession of a person with intent to use such property as a means of committing a crime, or the property or things so intended to be used are in the possession of another to whom they have been delivered for the purpose of concealing them or preventing their being discovered.

The property or things above-described constitutes evidence which tends to show a crime has been committed, or tends to show that a particular person has committed a crime.

Asked if that means the BCA considers Damond to be a suspect, spokesperson Jill Oliveira replied via email:

“No, an individual involved in the incident.”

Daly, who said he has served as a visiting professor at the University of Queensland in Damond’s native Australia, believes concerned members of the public in both countries will be outraged by the BCA’s request to search the home.

Instead of investigating Noor’s deadly actions, the first reaction to a completely unjustifiable murder by a police officer against an innocent woman was to go and file for a search warrant for her house. The focus of that search on the victim rather than the shooter, along with the statements about Damond being “panicked” during her 911 calls, Noor being startled by a loud noise, and the references to ambushes of police officers tells you what their true intent was in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

They were hoping to find something to smear her name with and make it appear that she was acting irrationally or in some way that could somehow be construed as threatening. Just for good measure, they’ve also made sure to say that a cell phone was found near her body, so they can claim he thought she was holding a gun. As is common practice for police departments when one of their own kills an innocent person, they were already setting up a scenario where Damond had caused her own death.

Meanwhile, Noor reportedly feels that his Brothas in Blue have “thrown him under the bus.” According to an anonymous friend, “His colleagues are accusing him of not showing proper police conduct on Saturday night.” To be fair, cops will normally support one of their own, regardless of how heinous and obvious their crime might be. However, it’s a bit hard to argue with anyone that says that shooting an innocent, unarmed woman is proper conduct.

Just before midnight on Saturday night (7/15/17), police in Minneapolis responding to a 911 call shot the woman who had made that call. Justine Damond, an Australian who was living with her fiance and his son, had called to report that she heard what sounded like someone being assaulted near her home. Justine, who was due to be married to Don Damond next month, died as a result of the shooting.

Neither officer that responded to her call has been publicly identified yet. Currently, both of them have been placed on paid vacation while their coworkers “investigate” what happened. As of yet, no official explanation has been given for why one of the police officers decided he needed to shoot Damond.

According to a statement to the media, the officers had not turned their body cameras on and their dash cam “did not capture the incident.” No explanation for why those cameras were not turned on was provided either, although Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has stated she intends to find that out.

Her stepson, Zac Damond, said she had called police after hearing a noise near her house.

“Two Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call of a possible assault just north of the 5100 block of Washburn Avenue S just before 11.30pm Saturday,” the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a statement, according to the Star Tribune. “At one point, an officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman.

“The BCA’s investigation is in its early stages. More information will be available once initial interviews with incident participants and any witnesses are complete … The officers’ body cameras were not turned on at the time and the squad camera did not capture the incident. Investigators are attempting to determine whether any video of the incident exists.”

The two officers involved are on paid administrative leave.

Her stepson said Damond, 40-year-old Sydneysider, was “passionate” and his “best friend”.

“Basically my mum was shot for reasons I don’t know,” he said in a video posted on Facebook on Monday morning. (Video embedded below – editor)

“I just know she heard a sound in the alley so then she called the police and the cops showed up and she was a very passionate woman, she probably thought something bad was happening and then next thing I know they take my best friend’s life.”

Details are still lacking at the moment and this story will be updated as those details emerge. However, what this story obviously illustrates is two things that I point out often here at Nevada Cop Block. First, the police cannot be trusted not to murder someone when they show up. They won’t do it every time, but you just never know when they might. So you should avoid calling 911 unless absolutely necessary (and you should do everything you possibly can to minimize or even eliminate that as a necessity) and unless you are comfortable with the possibility that the person you called them could end up dead. In fact, you might even be the one that gets killed.

Secondly, the police cannot be trusted to film themselves, whether that be via body cameras or dash cams. People still need to film the cops any time they interact with them for whatever reason. Otherwise, there’s a decent chance that they will “forget” to term them on or that they will “malfunction.” Even when that fails, the police still have control over whether that video will be released (and plenty of excuses not to).

It shouldn’t be up to the cop who is about to murder someone to turn the camera on that would document that. It also shouldn’t be up to police departments, who have a history of covering up for cops that kill, to release them to the public when they actually exist.

Sadly, but not at all surprisingly, the verdict that was announced was “not guilty.” The glaring reality that cases like this and those of Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby, who was also issued a license to murder just last month, serve as grim reminders of is that, even on the rare occasions when cops are charged with a crime after unnecessarily killing someone, it’s close to impossible for them to be convicted. Of course, even beyond the basic pre-conditioning of society of the provably false notions that the police are always right and never lie, the deck is always stacked in their favor during these show trials.

A judge controls what evidence can be presented to the jury and what will instead be excluded because it is “inflammatory” or prejudicial. Meanwhile, the onus of presenting that evidence falls to the prosecutor’s office, who work with the police on a daily basis and are dependent on maintaining good relations with them for every other case they pursue. Most trials against police officers are as much a forfeit as they are a loss.

Not only that but the bar is set incredibly low for police officers, even when they kill people that were clearly innocent. All they have to do is wear their Magic Uniform (sometimes they don’t even have to do that) and use those Magic Words, “I feared for my life.” That fear doesn’t have to be justified or even in any way rational. A cop simply has to state that they were afraid and it’s up to the prosecution to somehow prove that this heroic, fearless defender of the public was not in fact afraid for no good reason.

Plus, the media always does their part for the home team helping to glorify the heroic cop and demonizing the victim. Regardless of the circumstances or what you can see with your lying eyes on a video it’s always portrayed as a “tragic mistake” or that victim’s fault. Then they build up sympathy for the killer cops by telling you how much they have already suffered by losing their job and feeling really bad about what they did (oftentimes in spite of evidence to the contrary).

Of course, anyone else charged with a crime generally also ends ups being fired and rarely has the unwavering support of a police union to cushion that blow. yet, nobody says they should just walk free based on that “hardship.” Not to mention the deadly consequences of those officers’ actions inflicted upon those they kill and their families afterwards.

Minnesota Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez has been charged with second degree manslaughter for the shooting of Philando Castile in July of this year. The shooting received a large amount of public attention because Castile’s girlfriend, Lavish “Diamond” Reynolds, posted video using Facebook Live (see below) of the immediate aftermath. Also, Castile’s clean record and the lack of any actions by him to in any rational way justify his shooting created a large public outcry towards police.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced that charge, along with two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm, today. In doing so, he stated, “No reasonable officer would have used deadly force under these circumstances.” Choi also stated, “it is not enough … to express subjective fear of death or great bodily harm.” That’s somewhat of a (welcome) departure from the typical acceptance of a police officer simply proclaiming that they “feared for my life” as a blanket justification for their murders.

Choi said he concluded “use of deadly force by Officer Yanez was not justified.” Yanez was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.

Yanez fatally shot Castile, 32, July 6 during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights in which Castile informed the officer the he had a gun in his possession. A video recorded by Castile’s girlfriend, showing him bleeding in the car while the officer held them at gunpoint, has been viewed millions of times around the world, and touched off widespread outrage and protests over several years of police killings of black men.

“To those of you may say this incident was Philando Castile’s fault, I would submit that no reasonable officer — knowing, seeing and hearing what officer Yanez did at the time — would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” Choi said. “I have given officer Yanez every benefit of the doubt on his use of deadly force, but I cannot allow the death of a motorist who was lawfully carrying a firearm under these facts and circumstances to go unaccounted for.

In an interview with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) the day after the shooting, Yanez provided information that was “inconsistent” with statements immediately following the incident, Choi said.

“Officer Yanez said that as Castile was reaching down to his right, Castile turned his shoulder, kept his left hand on the steering wheel and then canted his upper body, blocking Officer Yanez’s view of his right hand,” Choi said, recounting Yanez’s statements to the BCA. “At that point, officer Yanez articulated that he was scared for his life and that of his partner.

“Officer Yanez’s verbatim statement, included in the criminal complaint, is inconsistent with the statement he made immediately following the incident in which he stated he never saw or knew where the gun was.”

Yanez fired seven times at Castile a minute after he had stopped Castile.

“Philando Castile was not resisting or fleeing,” Choi said. “There was absolutely no criminal intent exhibited by him throughout this encounter. He was respectful and compliant based upon the instructions and orders he was given. He volunteered in good faith that he had a firearm, beyond what the law requires. He empathically stated that he wasn’t pulling it out. His movement was restricted by his own seat belt”…

Before Yanez, no officer had been charged in more than 150 police-involved deaths in Minnesota since 2000. Yanez was summoned to make his first appearance in Ramsey County District Court at 1:30 Friday.

Choi said the charges were filed following 19 weeks of investigation and a review of the dashcam footage and audio footage taken during the shooting.

During a news conference Wednesday, Choi said that Yanez and his partner, Joseph Kauser, pulled Castile over the night of July 6 because he matched the description of a robbery suspect, and noted his “wide-set nose.”

Yanez said he was aware that Castile was buckled in his seat belt. He described Castile as initially having his left arm over the steering wheel with both hands in view. Yanez and Castile exchanged greetings, and Yanez told him about a broken brake light. Yanez asked Castile to produce his driver’s license and proof of insurance. After Castile provided him with the insurance, “Castile then calmly and in a nonthreatening manner said, ‘Sir, I do have to tell you that I have a firearm on me,’ ” Choi said.

Yanez replied OK, then placed his hand on his gun, according to Choi.

Yanez said “Don’t reach for (the gun),” Choi said.

Castile responded, “I’m not pulling it out.”

Yanez screamed “Don’t pull it out,” then with his left hand reached inside the vehicle. Yanez withdrew his hand, then fired seven shots in rapid succession.

The final shot was fired at 9:06 p.m.

Castile’s final words, Choi said, were “I wasn’t reaching for it.”

“His dying words were in protest that he wasn’t reaching for his gun,” Choi said. “There simply was no objective threat posed to Officer Yanez.”